


Mess

by RedEris



Series: Little, and broken, but still good [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 17:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21274991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedEris/pseuds/RedEris
Summary: Kieran's childhood has been far from conventional, but at Skyhold he finds a little time to just be a kid.





	Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Kieran-mess" on tumblr. It seems I've now written several pieces featuring Kieran and his family, so note that I have now put all of these pieces into a series.

Kieran had never been a messy child. Morrigan had never thought of it much--she had no other children, and spent little to no time around other families, and so her child was, in her mind, the model for “child”. What he did was simply how it was. Certainly she knew, in the abstract, that most children did not grow up always alone, always moving, often in the wilds, or in ruins among the ghosts of the distant past but rarely the people of the present. But _she_ had, and if he did as well, that was both natural and necessary.

Kieran had never had a _chance_ to be a messy child. He had few possessions to scatter, too little food to waste on mess, and when next they moved, Morrigan always made sure they left no trace.

Skyhold was a time of great adjustment. Even during their time at court, they had kept to themselves, and very few people had made any effort to challenge that. At Skyhold, people were packed in cheek by jowl, more every day, every sort of people. Their room, like most, was very small, and it was absurd to expect that Kieran would spend much time shut up there. So out he went, among all the people. 

The adjustment came like singing to him, like sunshine after rain. It came very hard to her. 

She loved her son with all her heart, and so she loved the shine in his eyes when she found him intently questioning the dwarven stonemason Gatsi, or helping the heralists. But she also felt it keenly. His world was opening, blooming, bursting. His world was no longer her.

She was self-aware enough to quietly mock her own pain. Kieran was thriving--she could make herself step aside, open her hands a little. She could, and she would.

The day she found him in the lower bailey, nearly unrecognizable through the mud and straw, she nearly failed in her resolve. There he was, laughing and whooping as he and the other children ran and _slid_ and _rolled_ through a huge puddle of mud, flinging great gobs of the stuff. Passing soldiers called out and laughed, egging the children on. Morrigan’s first instinct was to march right through the mess and take him by the ear.

But the things she might have said while she hauled him off, things that would have been true before--they weren’t, now. He _did_ have another change of clothes. A bath _could_ be drawn. Here where everyone was strange, his strangeness was not so great a danger. He didn’t need to avoid the other children. He could just...be a child. Make a mess.


End file.
